You do not need to memorize the whole periodic table with its 118 elements. Some of the elements are synthetic elements that have been produced artificially in particle accelerators, they are short-lived and you will most likely never have to deal with them in a lab, an assignment or the like. Memorize the latin names for the elements, e.g. sodium (Natrium), potassium (Kalium), gold (Aurum) etc. It’s not hard to memorize the latin names, - what’s hard is to memorize the whole of the periodic table and the location of the various elements. As for the position in the table, I would strongly suggest you do not memorize row and column number for every element. For example, the first row has 2 elements, the second and third have 8, the fourth and fifth have 18 and the last two have 32. The place at which the table divides is after 1 element in the first row, after 2 elements in next two rows and after 3 elements in the last two rows (rows 4 and 5 dont divide). The metals/nonmetals division is a predictable zig-zag (except for #85). If you memorize all these rules, you can easily reconstruct the entire table. Of course, it may take quite a while to do it in your head, and you might even have to sketch something quick on paper, but you can do it all from memory. RHYME: Rows are arranged so that elements with similar properties fall into the same vertical columns called groups (18 in all). Group 1. Harry Little Nailed Karl Rubens Cars Frequently. (Hydrogen Lithium Natrium Kalium Rubidium Caesium Francium). Group 2. Berry Macgregor Carried Stripper Babe Rachel. (Beryllium Magnesium Calcium Strontium Barium Radium). You’ve now managed memorize all the elements in group 1 and 2. Do same for group 13-18 and you’ve managed to memorize the “most important”elements of the periodic table…or should I say…the ones you’ll be dealing with most frequently. Remember to repeat rhyme 1, rhyme 1 and 2, rhyme 1, 2 and 3 etc etc. To expedite things, you can memorize a few additional bits of information. For example, you can memorize which elements are inert gasses: 2, 10, 18, 36, 54, 86, 118. This will tell you what row an element is in. For example, Zinc is 30, so it must be in row four because 36 is the fourth element in the inert gasses list. Additionally, it must be 6 elements to the left of Krypton (36-30 = 6). So doing this allowed me to figure out where Zinc was more quickly than reconstructing the entire table. But it was also less painful than memorizing row, column pairs for every element in the table.
Posted on: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 16:46:29 +0000
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